Time to sum up this years Winter NAMM show with a gallery of the 10 things that made this year’s event so great. I guess there will be few surprises to those who regularly follow our web magazine or any other of our web mag colleagues in the msuic creation business either

Overall trends for this year include:
a. More vendors takes the route of Arturia’s MiniBrute – analog, low price point, performance sized
b. Modular synths are hotter than ever, as well as the DIY micro synths
c. The controller / control surface segment is getting over crowded – who needs them all
d. Software retro clones of vintage classics has come to its peek
e. All analog synths are alive and kicking
f. All you can eat tablet instruments – iOS is all fed up, now vendors are looking to Android and other platforms
g. More innovation is needed in the DJ space

Here is Steelberry Clones’ top 10 list!

1. Moog Sub Phatty

2. KORG MS-20 Mini

3. KORG KingKORG

4. Arturia SparkLE

5. Dave Smith Instruments – Prophet 12

6. Roland V-Combo VR-09

7. AKAI MAX49

8. NORD Electro 4

9. NUMARK Orbit

10. KOMA Elektronik

That’s it for this year’s NAMM show, next up is MusikMesse in Frankfurt.

Please leave your comments if you agree or disagree with the listing or if anything ought to be added. We know that we probably should have included some software products as well, but we might come back to that later in the week.

Here is a recording of Jordan Passmore playing the Roland SH-2 analog synth and Roland CR-5000 analog drum machine. The CR-5000’s trigger out is connected to the external in on the SH-2, allowing the synth to sort of pulse with the drum machine.

“The drum machine is ran through an analog chorus pedal while the synth is being ran through an analog delay. Both were mixed on probably the “worst” mixer I have ever heard; an early Bogen transformer line mixer. You can hear the distortion very well on the drums but it is also distorting the synth as well. The overall mix was treated lightly through an Ibanez SDR-1000+ reverb.”

A quick comparison between Doepfer Dark Energy Mk I (CEM-based, just lopass w. lin fm) and Mk II (state variable filter, discrete circuit, etc.). Both machines under the same CV/Gate control from Dark Time step sequencer (courtesy of a bunch of multiples…). Mk I is panned more on Left audio channel; Mk II is more on Right audio channel. When they plays together, its a real GAS!!!

Roland is proud to introduce JUPITER Synth Legends, a series of free sound libraries for the JUPITER-80 and JUPITER-50 synthesizers. Featuring all-new Tones, Live Sets, and Arpeggio patterns, the collection uses the powerful and flexible SuperNATURAL sound engine to capture the essence of a number of historical synths. We’ve fully maximized the Live Set architecture and multi-effects capabilities of the modern JUPITERs, layering and processing the classic sound emulations to create a huge library of “dream patches” comprised of the most legendary synths ever produced.